Sunday, January 27, 2013

Instead
of starting with an abstract definition of happiness, let us first
look at what it is that makes us happy in the first place. Is it a
new wardrobe, an electronic gadget, a new car, or an unlimited supply
of sex, drugs and rock 'n' roll? Seeing that most of these items are
materialistic in nature, why not simply bribe our way through life
with money? Would that ensure happiness? Can money actually buy us
happiness?

In
fact, (a sufficient deal of) money does seem to make us happy. It
puts a smile on our face (imagine finding a bundle of large bills on
the street or suddenly obtaining a windfall); it enables us to pick
up gourmet foods (and partners?); it opens up a host of activities
and hobbies that are denied to many others, such as paragliding or
traveling around the world.

Yet
there is an obvious shortcoming connected to the word happiness
itself. It does indeed apply to those situations above. Who can say
with a straight face that they categorically do not enjoy sex or that
they gladly refuse all types of drugs (I am including coffee,
cigarettes, and chocolate on this list, Mormons excluded of course)?

When
we describe happiness, what we are talking about most of the time is
actually gratification. We gratify our desires, which in turn gives
us pleasure. Sex and drugs are good examples here; they give us
gratification for a while, but there remains a spot that is never
filled or satisfied; an itch that cannot be scratched; a part that
seems to be constantly on the run from the grasp of happiness.

What
to do then? It may turn out that the type of happiness we are talking
about keeps eluding us because we simply do not have the right word
designed for - or rather assigned to - it. We may feel trapped in our
lack of words in the English language the same way a non-Eskimo
purportedly lacks the vocabulary to perceive the slightly variations in a snowstorm. So lacking vocabulary, we have simply a
feeling of unease, a certain seemingly unscratchable itch which we do
not know the cause of and for which we lack the remedy.

Since
we are obviously at odds here, let us borrow a term from the ancient
Greeks, those who are mainly responsible for putting us on this path
of self-consciousness more than two thousand years ago. We stumble
upon Aristotle and his views on (true) happiness, which he calls
eudaimonia (often translated as "human flourishing," while Socrates might prefer the term “good demon”).

As
we can see the idea of flourishing is much more dynamic and not
merely a particular moment, outcome or desire along the scales of
time. It cannot be pinpointed precisely as it is in constant bloom
(although interestingly the Greeks did assign a certain moment as the
climax of one's intellectual accomplishments, as they often ignore
the birth and death of an individual and simply state that, for
example, Euclid flourished at around 300 BC, while my own flourishing
probably took place at around age 16).

In
this sense, the emphasis on change and transformation is a rather
Buddhist idea similar to the blooming of the lotus flower floating on
a grey lake of Mayan ignorance. The thing is true happiness is not
(nor can it be) a snapshot or a moment of bliss; it is (or rather
should be) a lifetime of joy. It is like moving from the aesthetic
self-absorbed (Kierkegaard's first) level to the higher realms of the
ethical and / or religious sphere.

Suddenly,
we are shifting from a materialistic framework, of that which can be
accessed with - and is generally within the reach of - money to a
more (for a lack of better words) spiritual view on happiness.
Imagine the Buddha after years of mindful meditation, after
struggling with demons (not the Socratic ones but the really bad guys
with rotten teeth and worse intentions) and all this time the man
once known as Siddhartha Gautama is nourishing the growing and
glowing light within, in the process of releasing the ego of its
human-made shackles (freeing Siddhartha from himself) and finally
reaching that sublime and wonderful peak of enlightenment.

After
a moment or two of exultation and unspeakable bliss, he might ask
himself the following question: Now what? And that is exactly the
point here. Every time we overcome a hurdle, every time we smell and
taste the delicious flavor of success; every time we have satisfying
sex or get that long-awaited raise, there is a push for something
else, something more, something different.

And
our lives are spent in those myriad moments that we label crudely as
either happy or sad, but it is their complementary combination, their
complexity, their final culmination or tally that may give us true
and lasting happiness, the state of eudaimonia.

For
Aristotle, happiness and virtue are permanently entwined in intimate
ways. Virtue could be seen as the reign on instant gratification via
the controlling faculties of reason. For example, you may have a
wonderful and happy union with your wife, and there is suddenly the
chance of the gratification of an instant and often hidden desire.

Sure,
it would make you happy, at least momentarily, to engage in an
illicit and pleasure-giving activity with another woman, but at the
same time it is the unethical or “wrong” thing to do. You would
put in jeopardy your continuous time-stretching shot at lasting
happiness for the irrational mad pleasure of a single instance.So
the voice of reason in this case sounding like a faded version of
your parents will (hopefully!) steer you away from “temptation”
and put you back into the arms of your wife, on the long and winding
road of eudaimonia.

Yes,
happiness is not a case of winning the lottery or even fulfilling our
dreams; it is rather a continuous patient quest for fulfillment, for
growth, for virtue. To give a quasi-mathematical illustration here,
tally up all your sexual partners and they will not add up to the
love of your one and only steadfast partner.

Eudaimonia
or the Buddhist outlook on happiness may be less thrilling and less
fun and involve work through dedication and discipline compared to
the deliciously impulsive, blind and wild passion; yet eudaimonia
will flourish under the temperate climate of the Mediterranean coast
and make you truly happy over the long haul, of course.

Sunday, January 20, 2013

For
quite some time I have had two specific concerns on my mind. One of them, in fact, concerns my memory. My memory can be encyclopedic
for names and dates (I know who wrote what book or which director
made what film when) but ask me to describe what my bathroom looks
like or to give details about everyday objects I use and I will draw
a blank (literally, I'd draw a blank page!).

My
second problem is that I feel guilty about not enjoying detailed
descriptions of settings. I have seen other friends and lovers of
fiction rave and drool about how Victor Hugo gives such an incredibly
vivid image of the sewage system spanning five pages or thereabouts.
I am sorry that those descriptions do not stimulate my mind nor fire
any neurons on my part. At best, they make me yawn and that is in no
way meant as a deterrent or criticism of the aforementioned author.

In
fact, that may be the reason why I never attempted to read Les
Misérables and why I
enjoy Dostoevsky, for instance, who tends to be rather low
on physical descriptions (at least if my memory is to be trusted, see
concern one). But again I used to feel guilty because I know I ought
to salivate over the expansive imagery used in novels, sewers or not.
That is until I read Bergen's book.

I
cannot recommend this book any more strongly (in the sense that there
are no words strong enough to express my support, and not in the
sense that there is nothing good to say about it!). Benjamin K.
Bergen's Louder Than
Words: The New Science Of How The Mind Makes Meaning
examines language and meaning-making through what is called embodied
simulation over the often vague and rather ill-defined concept of
Mentalese.

Let
us look at specific examples to illustrate the different approaches
of the two theories. Let us assume you are learning French because
you want to read Hugo's magnificent sewer description in its original
French to be able to savor its full flavor. And you stumble upon a
word that looks like nothing you have ever seen before, French or
otherwise. What do you do?

The
answer is evident: You look up the specific word in a dictionary. So
you will find an English definition that is the equivalent of that
French term. So far so good. But assuming English is your first and
native language, how did you learn your own language in the first
place? Did you look up definitions as well? But that is like not
knowing any French and looking up a French word in a purely French
dictionary. To put it in Bergen's words: What gives?

The
explanation that I had been familiar with from my own share of
university psych classes was the following: There is a thought
language called Mentalese that defines and decodes words and
expressions being used in our first, native language. It is like a
dormant language program embedded in the brain waiting for the
acquisition of language to turn it on. But then what do we use to
decode the Mentalese words with? We use a definition of a definition
of a definition ad infinitum (or rather ad absurdum).

And
hence, embodied simulation steps in to fill in the void. It means we
decode the words we find with the help of images we have in our mind.
So when we read a sentence, we imagine it in our minds in order to
make sense of it. When, for example, “the cat jumps on the table”
we see in our mind's eye the properties of what constitutes a cat (of
course the image is colored and shaped by our own idiosyncratic
tendencies, which are made up of our own previous experiences on the subject).

Then
we imagine the action of jumping (something we are probably familiar
with since childhood) and we see the table (the place where the cat
arrives made of glass, wood or what-have-you). Replace the cat with
jabberwocky (cat = jabberwocky) and you might not get as clear an
image unless you are familiar with the works of Monty Python and/or
Lewis Carroll.

It
is rather amazing how as our brain is in the process of simulating,
the same neurons associated with respective actions become excited
(but do not fire). It is like the state of REM sleep, where we
imagine actions, but our bodies do not act upon them.

It
also explains why athletes who visualize scoring goals or bowling
strikes tend to score more goals and bowl more strikes when in
action! As we are mentally rehearsing, our muscles do the same and we
are ready to turn our mental picture into real action.
(Interestingly, the reverse is true as well: visualizing that you
fail will increase your chances of failure!). So better to visualize
a knock-out performance before your next job interview and romantic
date, and you just might get the job and
the girl!

But
language can be tricky, as Bergen demonstrates as well. Let us look
at the word “clubbing.” Now I tend to think of a pouncing room
with sweaty people dancing their hearts out, but others might be
thinking of getting hit by a club. It turns out that when there is
conflicting information, our brains tend to adjust the information
and the context at hand.

Bergen
looks at a number of metaphors, and he actually uses the idea of
“clubbing the reader over the head.” In this scenario, nobody
gets hurt, physically-speaking at least. So while we first simulate
the unpleasant fact of being hit on the head with a club-like object,
the brain corrects the statement and understands that this is not
meant to be taken literally. That is also why idiomatic expressions,
such as clubbing someone
over the head can bring
about veritable headaches for those who are learning English as a
second or foreign language.

Louder
than Words is filled with a number of scientific studies testing
this embodied simulation hypothesis. We also learn about cultural
differences since the relationship between words and actions can
become a completely different experience across cultures. For
example, while Westerners would wait (and simulate the act of
waiting) in a sitting position, the Chinese prefer to squat instead.
So the simple and commonplace act of waiting depends on cultural
contexts and takes on different proportions or stances in one's mind's
eye.

Language
is a very personal experience and not an objective means of
communication. Our previous experiences, both personal and cultural,
strongly influence how we make meaning of words and expressions. And
this explains why reading (simulating all those words into actions in
one's mind) sometimes tires me, why having dreams about work exhaust
me and why I should log them as extra hours or overtime.

For
all the so-called multi-taskers out there, the brain cannot do two
things at once, the same way, as Bergen puts it, the mouth cannot
chew and whistle at the same time! Since the mere thought - and by
extension simulation - of something puts your neurons on alert, ready
to fire at any moment, it also makes talking on cellphones
(hands-free or not) or even simply worrying about an issue a
hazardous undertaking while driving.

This
also gives us useful knowledge about language learning and teaching,
for example, why foreign students may have difficulty understanding
certain concepts even after looking them up in their own language. I
strongly recommend this book for language teachers and educators out
there. It also gave me an interesting glimpse of the scientific
process and rigors, even though my bruised head smarted afterwards,
metaphorically speaking.

All
in all, this book is definitely worth its salt (and I haven't even
touched upon its wit, humor and its recurring analogy of
"flying pigs" -- for a glimpse see the book cover above). If you want stimulating and intelligent reading, go no
further. You will find out if you are a visualizer or a verbalizer (I
am a verbalizer and I assume “great brains simulate alike”) and
it might just help you to avoid pitfalls and manipulation of language
so that we can make sure that we are communicating more effectively
in our daily lives.

Because,
in fact, we are what we speak and words can have tremendous impact on
our lives. They are not only used for the purposes of this post, but
they also help us to make heads and tails of the world. Words can
start and end wars and crusades, relationships and marriages, and may
lead to success and failure in our professional world. In other
words, let us not underestimate the power and influence of words nor
take their meaning-making lightly.

Sunday, January 13, 2013

I
had to remind myself not to forget to write this post since once an
idea is forgotten, it ends up in the trash can of no-man's land
(located at the intersection of the Bermuda Triangle). I wonder how
many brilliant books and movies have been heaped upon the dustbin of
lost, abandoned or never-realized projects. It happens everyday
everywhere to everyone; we tend to forget to put on paper ideas that
would have (potentially) made an impact on our lives.

Memoryis essential for our everyday existence; it is the glue that connects
our yesterdays with the present moments to create a (somewhat)
cohesive picture of ourselves, of our lives. Any disconnect will
disrupt our sense of continuity and create a dent or hole in our
personality and being. In fact, such disconnects, especially if on
repeated basis, will not only confuse but create a thickening cloud
of insanity.

Memory
has been portrayed in a number of films, most notably in the modern
era where one has shifted from accepted given absolute truths to a
more personal subjective and fallible view of reality. And this sense
of disorientation and confusion, coupled with technology is best
viewed in dystopian movies like Total
Recall
and Dark Cityamong various others.
Please keep in mind that there might be minor movie spoilers ahead
though I will not divulge any endings.

The
movie Total Recall
(I am only referring to the original Verhoeven film as I have not
seen - nor am I interested in - the more recent remake) asks us a
simple but terrifying question: What if we could create fake
memories? The protagonist takes advantage of an inexpensive
(virtual-reality) trip in which the memory of a vacation on Mars is
implanted as authentic / real-seeming as any other memory we have
of our own past experiences.

Something
goes wrong, (or does it?) and the protagonist becomes confused with
his own identity. Did this experiment help him retrieve or dig out
his own original and actual memories of his real life, his buried past as a secret
agent? Is he not a construction worker but rather a high level
secret agent whose memory has been erased so that he could blend in
with society as a construction worker? Confused? Well, not half as much as
our befuddled protagonist.

Let
us say that we have the technology to erase / implantmemories
as was the case in the sublime film with the awkward title Eternal
Sunshine of the Spotless Mind
(I know it's taken from a Pope poem but it still rings awkward for a
Hollywood movie title).In
the movie, the main character decided to erase all the memories
associated with his doomed love affair, which would seem like an
ideal manner of escaping unpleasant memories and previous
experiences. But the end result is other than expected since memories
are not as clear-cut as they seem; they dangle on a slippery slope.

But
what if you wake up one morning and feel strongly that you are
someone else. How do you know that you are who you think you are? Do you check the mirror, your wallet? As
a matter of fact, we can never be really sure since we could be
deluding ourselves, or worse, we might be suffering from a mental
illness.

Surely,
we would lock up anybody who seriously thinks to be Napoleon or
even Jesus (see the excellent and hilarious The Ruling
Class to this effect,
thanks dear Vincent for pointing out this precious gem to me!). It is easy
to dismiss those famous alternate personalities, but what if you
choose a random person nobody has ever heard of, say Arash Farzaneh?

Now
this becomes a bit more existential here. We need others to confirm
our identity in the sense of "I see you, therefore you exist." When I
wake up and my wife greets me as the person I think I am (see above),
then there you go; we have the confirmed evidence to go with the
assumption. Right?

Not
so fast if you are in the dilemma of Mr
Nobody who on his
deathbed with an ailing and confused memory tries to piece together
his possible pasts to understand his actual present! But it is not
always merely a metaphysical puzzle; it can also be that others are
messing with you!

And
this brings us to the somewhat overlooked and underrated cult film
Dark City.
Here the premise is that highly technologically advanced creatures
have come to not only implant memories but to switch them overnight
wholesale.

So you would fall asleep as a couple slightly above the
poverty line eating potatoes in a shack and wake up on a large dining
table with servants serving you up steaks and fine wine. The
transition would seem rather seamless because not only you buy this
drastic change, but so does your wife to confirm this, and vice
versa. Suddenly you are a completely different person with matching
memories of that particular individual!

To
take this question further (and to fry our brains a little more) what
would happen if we could implant not only memories but transplant whole brains.
It is one thing to be told embarrassing stories about some event in
childhood that may have never happened and that you, through repeated
telling, take as actual fact; it is quite another to have someone
literally switch your brain with that of someone else's.

We
may look at our face in the mirror and feel that something is amiss
that somehow the name and the memories do not match the face, but
there is no hard evidence. And think about it; we may be like the
main character in Memento
who has a mental condition affecting his short-term memory making him
unable to create new stable memories; he would only remember a 90
second stretch and then forget everything. Suddenly he would look
around and ask himself how he got to where he is and what he is doing
with a wine bottle in the bathroom while not feeling drunk in the
least.

This
shows us that once we lose trust and faith in our memories, our
identity and our whole world that we have created around us fall apart
like a card-house. In a world where we constantly look for tangible
facts, it seems strange that our personality is so brittle that a
simple knock on the head in real life can erase it all. We end up
being not who we thought we were (is somebody messing with our minds
or are we doing it to ourselves?), but the question remains, who were
we in the first place? Can we really trust our memories on this one?

Saturday, January 5, 2013

Imagine
Bruce Wayne as a police blood spatter expert by day and wielding an
assortment of knives to take
out or rather slice
up the bad guys at night.
Replace the fancy bat costume with plastic wrap (used mainly to tie
up victims and eliminate traces of DNA). And oh yes, most
importantly, Dexter contrary to Batman, not only finishes
off his victims, but
enjoys doing so; it has become a ritual that soothes him the same way
yoga or beer would calm us ordinary folks.

While
Batman works rather quite closely with the authorities to catch the
bad guys, Dexter operates on a completely different mode. Dexter
follows a specific code supposedly established by his adoptive father
Harry (who incidentally knew about the dark side of this strange boy)
and wanted to find a way of channeling this dark energy for “good”
purposes. Hence, Dexter, a serial killer by nature, specializes in killing those who deserve to be killed, which turns him effectively into a
vigilante.

Apart
from the pleasure he derives from killing - a main staple, drive and
incentive for serial killers - Dexter wants to ensure that justice is
served. And the problem of the law is that it has its own fair share
of cracks and holes; many a criminal can slip and slide through them
given a good lawyer, defense, influence or money, for instance. To
make sure that there is swift punishment and that the atrocities stop
immediately - before more harm is done by these heartless and, more
importantly, loose criminals - this cold-blooded serial killer
takes justice into his own blood-stained hands.

These
ideas may ring like Old Testament philosophy, the “eye for an eye”
type of justice (except that it contains little personal motive apart
from an abstract love for justice and a hatred of injustice on
Dexter's part). The fact that the people Dexter kills are, for the
most part at least, despicable individuals seems to make the killing
acceptable.

It
is, unlike other serial killings, connected to an albeit twisted
sense of morality. The dark hero acts in the name of unwavering and
steady justice, ignoring any room for readjustment or repentance. We
might ask ourselves if people change, but I agree with Dexter on this
issue, more often than not, they do not.

Yet
there is also another problem at issue here. Dexter feels privileged
about overstepping the boundaries of law. Sure, it is the
Machiavellian view of means
justifying the end, with
Dexter leading the path to a more peaceful and just society via the
elimination of established threats. But there is also the feeling
that somehow Dexter is beyond the law, as if he were given full
immunity and a carte blanche to do as he please.

Such
an idea is not new. Raskolnikov, the character from Dostoevsky's
famous novel Crime and
Punishment had similar,
but admittedly less noble, ideas about law and morality. Raskolnikov
believes that as a superior individual, he is exempt from the
restraints of common law. The law is made for all the ordinary folks,
who need guidance and guidelines for moral behavior, but they do not
necessarily nor automatically apply to him personally.

Raskolnikov
sees himself as a prototypical Nietzschean master, modelling himself
somewhat after Napoleon, who can step out of what constitutes
“regular” morality of the masses; in fact, he defines and
redefines what is moral by allowing room for killing and looting if
it suits his needs as the passionate elite-warrior that he claims to
be. In such a way, it boils down not to a matter of justice, but of
entitlements provided to the exceptional hero.

So
both Raskolnikov and Dexter believe to be part of an elite group of
society; they simply make the rules for the rest of us (or rather
they evade them for their own convenient purposes) and they live and
act in tune and according to their nature and personality. In the
novel, Raskolnikov tries to demonstrate his superiority by killing
without a clear motive, a kind of gratuitous act; this perhaps
demonstrates his own independence along with a lack of constraint
from standard morality and commonly established and accepted rules.
In an absurd way, he becomes - or at least sees himself as - a
revolutionary of his times.

In
the movie Pickpocket,
Bresson's modernized adaptation of Dostoevsky's novel, Michel is a
petty thief who picks pockets not necessarily out of economic
necessity (though given his living arrangement it must play somewhat
of a role!) but because he enjoys it, and he is good at it. The fact
that he escapes the law and is not caught by the police only
reaffirms to himself that he is an exceptional individual. His main
observation about the life of crime is that there needs to be a
social balance between those who follow the rules and those who break
them, i.e. criminals.

This
type of motivation is also expressed in the movie Lord of War(2005), which deals with
an arms dealer who has far exceeded his economic needs and is
immersed in wealth and riches, but still continues with this immoral
profession merely because he is so good at it. All of this gives the
“be yourself,” “be who you are” or simply “do what you are
good at” philosophy an absurd after-taste.

I
must say that I personally have little sympathy for Raskolnikov and
Michel his modern French off-shoot, but I cannot help falling for the
charismatic Dexter. The reason might be that he combines both
elements of good and evil in a dangerous but strangely satisfying
cocktail.

Yet
there is something else at work here. We all would like to be those
individuals. We would like to have the courage to break laws; part of
why we do not do so is the fear of punishment, of retribution, the
consequences of the full force of law.

Were
we as good at killing others like Dexter, or as good at picking
pockets like Michel, or as good at forging checks like Frank
Abagnale, then we would also engage in those activities and sneer at
the authorities and the law and taunt them with the catch phrase: Catch
me if you can!